018: New Order Mormons Pt. 1–Ann’s Story

Today we begin a 2 part series on New Order Mormonism. New Order Mormons’ web site can be found here. According to their web site, “New Order Mormons are those who no longer believe some (or much) of the dogma or doctrines of the LDS church, but who want to maintain membership for cultural and social reasons.”

In part 1 of this series, we interview Ann–a pleasant but strong force in the bloggernacle, and also a leader within New Order Mormonism. Ann shares with us her story–and details her journey into New Order Mormonism.

Comments 4

Great podcast, John! Way to go, Nanna P. Enjoyed it much. Am anxiously awaiting part 2. So nice to put a voice to the name. My only comment is that I disagree that visiting NOM and other Internet sites is not a good idea for those who have begun questioning the faith–where else should they go? Sunday School? The Temple? A grove of trees? I think I will start a thread on this over at NOM–it’s an idea worht discussing in depth, I think. Anyway, thanks John for this service.

Very nice Ann! Thank you to you and John for your efforts here. I think you framed the issues very nicely. To emphasize a point that was made in the podcast, many people at New Order Mormons have been “surprised” by the truth of the historical foundations of the church. They have come to an understanding of a more accurate history and the discrepancy between the correlated Sunday School “Gospel Doctrine” material and reality is so vast that the discrepancy raises the question regarding “what else” is being kept secret? One of the points made is that if we would have had a better understanding of reality from the start, there would have been no surprise. Perhaps those joining the church later in life would have given pause for thought before joining if they had been presented with a more clear understanding. For those people, I wonder about the quick teach and baptize missionary teaching style employed by the church. I wonder whether or not it would be more honest to take the approach that the Catholics employ, requiring a significant period of education before committment. I suspect that if I had been given a more accurate understanding of church history in my youth, none of the things that shocked me out of completely believing state would have even phased me.

The milk before meat concept so often employed by the church is taken out of all reasonable context. The church materials have become a steady diet of milk. What would happen to any mammal developmentally if they were only allowed to drink milk for the duration of their lives? At times apologists will make the claim that the meat was there for the taking and it is the fault of the individual for not seeking out the meat. An honest examination of the church culture and directives will show that people are encouraged to use scriptures and church correlated manuals, not bring uncorrelated materials into class, and to avoid things that are not faith promoting. This sets the stage for total focus on the sanitized, white-washed version of church history that comes out of the correlation department. When reality conflicts with the milk-only diet, there are many problems that can arise for many good, honest, faithful Latter-day Saints.

We’ve got a thread going on the NOM board about this, but any believing LDS reading this might not want to go there.

While I agree that those who question the faith don’t have a lot of resources, there are religiously liberal, but faithful, resources available. Sunstone and Dialogue come to mind. Some of the believing blogs are just excellent resources – BCC, FMH and LDS LF come to mind.

I think the ability to come through a faith crisis and emerge with a more metaphorical vision of the church and its mission is largely based on the kind of conversion one had in the first place. Peggy described it really well when she compared the church’s unique teachings as mythos, that it conflates with logos. And as logos, it just doesn’t hold up. My conversion relied on the two being equal. Since they aren’t (IMO), I’m left with no logos, and no mythos either. I’m trying to reconstruct one, but that’s not easy going. It was much easier just having it handed to me.